I’ve been searching online but couldn’t find a definite answer. Does anybody know the best school(s) for pre med?
Look for:
Low cost.
Where you can earn A grades in all of your courses.
Where you can do expected pre-med extracurriculars without excessive commuting.
Where you can prepare for other directions in the likely case you do not get into any medical school.
This issue has come up quite often on CC. There is some range of opinions. I do not think that there is any clear answer.
It has been pointed out that top schools (eg Harvard) have a higher percentage of their students accepted to medical school compared to very good schools (eg, U.Mass Amherst). However, a high percentage of incoming students at Harvard College (the undergraduate part of Harvard) were close to being the top student in their high school. If these same students had gone to U.Mass Amherst and worked very hard, they might have been likely to be close to the top of their class there also. However, they cannot all be in the top half of their class at Harvard. For any one student, it is not clear whether their chances of getting into medical school would be maximized by attending Harvard or by attending U.Mass Amherst.
Most students who show up as freshmen intending to be premed end up changing their mind, and never apply to medical school. Most students who do apply to medical school do not get in anywhere. This suggests that one thing that you need to do is to have a “plan B”. Avoiding debt for undergrad is very important both because you might end up on some other path, and also because medical school is insanely expensive.
Many universities have very good premed programs. Your in-state flagship probably has a very good premed programs (I don’t know your state but certainly your state has a need for doctors).
Premed classes will be a lot more difficult than you expect. Some of them will be harder than anything that you have ever seen. There will be a lot of very strong students in your classes. The students who get mostly A’s in these classes will be the ones who get to attend medical school.
This is basically a long way to agree with @ucbalumnus. You need to budget for 8 years with the last 4 been very expensive (“low cost”). You want to be able to get A grades in very tough classes full of very strong students, which suggests schools where you are somewhere near the top of incoming students (“you can earn A grades”). Acceptance to medical school will require that you have built up a lot of experience volunteering in a medical environment. And you want a school which has a good “plan B” available.
If you search “The 25 Best Colleges for Pre-meds,” you will find a sampling of schools that you could research further.
Have you been accepted to all three of these?
Not yet. Thinking of applying. I have already toured WashU.
Out of four universities, WashU,Stanford,UNC, and Princeton, which is the best for pre-med? It will cost me less to go to WashU because I do not need to pay for housing tuition since I am in-state, if that makes a difference
Do you mean the University of Washington in Seattle or Washington University in St Louis?
My son is in Medical School-2nd year. Undergrad is Secondary (3.8+ in core pre-med required courses ), MCAT and (shadows/internships) are Primary considerations from our experience.
If you are talking about WUSTL, they have a first year on campus housing requirement. Some may be able to get a waiver, but they are most likely for medical/religious reasons. Even then their answer is likely to give a single.
ucbalumnus nailed it.
Regarding grades: I went to an Ivy League school intending to be a doctor and was “weeded out.” It turns out that it’s not so easy to get A’s in organic chemistry when the class is curved to a median grade of B- and most of one’s fellow students are brilliant. Happily, I found a different and wonderful career path, but if I were applying to college today and wanted a career in medicine, I’d go to my state school, where I’d be one of the top students.
As for finances: Your state school will probably be cheapest, but don’t make assumptions. It was cheaper for me to send my kid to an Ivy than to our (relatively expensive) state flagship. Run the Net Price Calculators for the schools that you’re interested in attending.
OChem is hard everywhere. So many students have near perfect high school GPAs and they don’t understand what it takes to get a competitive med school GPA is college. Here is the grade distribution of Intro Organic Chemistry (Chem 343) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for last semester.
A(4.0): 22.0%
AB(3.5): 10.2%
B(3.0): 26.9%
BC(2.5): 8.9%
C(2.0): 23.0%
D(1.0): 6.3%
F(0.0): 3.8%
Check out Rhodes College in Memphis. Lots of great research opportunities with St. Jude’s. Better to be a star at Rhodes than an also-ran at Harvard?
Your best move is kind of determined by whether you ultimately want to be an Academic doctor in a very competitive specialty (like Derm,) in a very competitive city, (Like NYC), or on the other hand if you would rather be a local community Surgeon in Kansas City or something.
If you want to be a community Surgeon type, you don’t need to play up research credentials. Instead, go to the state school and play up the fact that you will remain in state and become a local Surgeon or primary care physician.
If your state is MO, you should consider aiming for a U of MO medical school, because it gives a huge instate bonus for admission. They accept 22% of instate applicants vs 5.9% of out of state applicants. You will also get instate tuition, which will save you a bundle.
https://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■/medical/in-state-out-of-state-admissions
University of Missouri-Columbia School of Medicine
GPA 3.81
MCAT 508
Interview Rate(s) 55.1% in-state | 4.3% out-state
Acceptance Rate 5.9%
Percent of Entering Class In State 77.5% in-state acceptance
Tuition $29,447 in-state | $59,965 out-state
University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine
GPA 3.83
MCAT 507
Interview Rate(s) 84.2% in-state | 14.2% out-state
Acceptance Rate NA
Percent of Entering Class In State NA
Tuition $32,959 in-state | $63,961 out-state
https://mededits.com/medical-school-admissions/medical-schools-missouri/
For undergrad, go to a Missouri system school that is inexpensive and has grade inflation.
Major in “G.P.A.”,
Minor in “MCAT”
Again, this is assuming you want to be community Surgeon, FM, Emerg, Med, Rad, etc. If you want to practice academic medicine in Dermetology, in NYC, you’ll need to go a different route.
My 2 centavos.
Ignore everything I just wrote above.
They just announced Step 1 will now be pass fail, thus name brand of your undergrad institution will probably become way more important.
I think the OP is a Junior in HS so all of these schools are just a wish list. @Boxcar101, why would the new resolution for Step 1 affect a high school students choice of UG?
Because residencies will no longer be able to distinguish between candidates based on Step 1 score. Accordingly, caliber of medical and undergraduate school will become much more important as they are one of the few distinguishing factors left.
Until now one could save money by going to state schools. So long as they could perform on test day they had a decent shot at any specialty. But how is someone from the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine going to compete with Stanford or HMS students when they have no way to prove they are more qualified? Especially since most schools give p/f grades. The least of the HMS students will get Ortho before the very best State school student.
Ortho, Derm, NYS, Plastics may end up being the exclusive domain of the rich students now, with few state school students having a way to prove their intellect to make themselves competitive for those highly sought-after specialties.
I think the state school track just became a lot more difficult. But if you’re an IMG or going to DO school you’re going to be especially burnt. There’s no way to compete against American Allos, which was tough enough to begin with.
Of course, no one knows for sure. It could be that Step 2 just becomes a lot more important, so they kicked the can down the road but didn’t change a lot. (Except the timing is much tougher.)
It will be interesting seeing this sort out.
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You can get in medical schools from any college if you have done required courses with high GPA, have interesting and relevant extracurriculars and a high MCAT.
Only reason there are higher numbers of state school kids going to medical schools is because there are more of those kids, T20 only have a small number of kids, who’s high percentage also get accepted at medical schools. Top medical schools tend to have more of top school kids but it’s probably because T20 have high numbers of high achievers and majority of them can afford top medical schools.
However, as undergrad education, opportunities and experiences are important and you only get one shot at undergrad education and those 4-5 five years of your youth, find a school where you are likely to enjoy learning and growing. If your family can sponsor then no worries, otherwise pick where you get scholarship or aid because students can’t get enough loans to cover high cost colleges. You get bigger loans for medical schools.
@Boxcar101, I completely agree with you regarding the implications of the resolution. But the OP is only asking about UG schools, NOT med schools.
@CottonTales
Sure, but my original response was to tell him that he didn’t really need to worry about going to an elite UG or medical school if he didn’t want to do academic medicine. As per the above, I advised that he should consider taking advantage of the low cost instate advantage of his state schools for both college and med school instead of more expensive elite undergrad and medical schools.
More directly, there’s no point in advising someone to go to an elite undergrad if they are only trying to get into their state medical school. Just take the cheapest option, get good grads, score well on the MCAT.
But if one wants to go to an elite medical school it makes sense to go to an elite undergrad, as that will increase your chances of admissions.
At any rate, I’m not sure if that’s good advice anymore.